The present invention relates to a method of making information easier to use, and more particularly, is directed to a website that has been augmented with information intended to be saved to a user's file of clippings.
Information users and information providers both want the information users to be able to easily save and recall information published on the Internet. For instance, a user wishing to purchase a high quality item typically browses different websites and may go to a nearby store as part of their purchase process.
The need for improved webpage bookmarks has been recognized.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,899,829, “Intelligent bookmarks and information management system based on same”, shows a method for an individual browsing a website to generate “intelligent bookmarks” that include metadata for various fields, as shown in FIG. 3 (see fields for screenshot, URL, title, keywords, etc.). The reference discloses extracting information and metadata from website to be bookmarked (column 8, line 35-column 9, line 31). The reference further discloses a visual representation of the bookmark (element 44). When the bookmark is first created, the information and metadata is extracted from the website, but was not provided by the website for specific purpose of creating a bookmark. The reference discloses the online sharing of the intelligent bookmarks between a number of users in communication with an intelligent bookmark database (column 11, lines 24-58). The reference discloses publishing the bookmark as part of a blog posting for others to download (column 12, lines 31-30).
U.S. Pat. No. 5,918,237, “Method and apparatus for improved bookmark and histories entry creation and access”, shows a method for generating multimedia bookmarks in which the there is embedded in an HTML document data that describes the location of multimedia bookmark description (“MBD”) information (column 4, lines 44-55; column 5, lines 48-57). The user can then save the MBD as a multimedia bookmark that appears in the user's bookmark list (column 4, line 56-column 5, line 3; column 5, line 62-column 6, line 37). The reference further shows displaying the MBD bookmarks graphically in a bookmark list (column 7, lines 9-23, FIG. 6).
U.S. Pat. No. 7,167,901, “Method and apparatus for improved bookmark and histories entry creation and access”, shows a method for generating bookmarks as part of a bookmark list with bookmarks that include metadata for various fields, as shown in FIG. 3 (see fields for Name, URL, description, and keywords). The reference discloses populating the description and keywords fields of the bookmarks from the metadata of the websites being bookmarked (column 4, lines 6-49). However, this metadata was not provided by the website for specific purpose of creating a bookmark. The representation of FIG. 3 is used only to manually edit the fields of the bookmark by the user.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,486,891, “Automated bookmarking of online advertisements”, discloses a method of generating bookmarks associated with an online advertisement that has been placed within a webpage. The reference discloses causing a traditional click through advertisement to be displayed within a webpage (FIG. 5), and allowing the user to bookmark the website associated with the advertisement (column 6, lines 11-19) by causing the website to transmit to the client an applet that automatically bookmarks the associated website (column 6, lines 39-60). The reference is limited to standard browser bookmarks.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,041,701, “Enhanced graphical interfaces for displaying visual data”, generally discloses enhanced graphical interfaces for various uses of web browsers. Specifically, the reference shows a graphical bookmark manager with a horizontal bookmark toolbar, multiple bookmark lists, and thumbnails (column 11, lines 7-53, FIG. 13).
There is still room to improve a user's ability to collect information while browsing web pages.